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Rogovoy Report 10/19/18

The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include a one-woman show, a film festival, funk and soul concerts, readings, lectures, plus a whole lot more.

The annual nine-day-long FilmColumbia festival kicks off this weekend, presenting 50 world-class independent and international films, plus post-screening Q&As with acclaimed artists and special tributes and events, all within walking distance of each other in the charming downtown of Chatham, N.Y. Festival highlights include “Shoplifters,” this year’s Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, an emotionally rich drama about a tightly knit, three-generation family of small-time thieves who “adopt” an abandoned and abused young girl. Also of note this year are “The Hate U Give,” inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement; “Widows” from Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen, an edge-of-your-seat heist thriller set against the backdrop of politics, passion and blood; and “Cold War,” from Oscar winner and this year’s Best Director at Cannes Pawel Pawlikowski, a love story set in the 1950s and early ‘60s about a relationship compromised by a political system that perverted human emotion and loosely based on the director’s parents’ experience.

Brooklyn-bred artist Shareef Keyes draws equal inspiration from James Brown and Wu-Tang. Together with his band The Groove, he is earning a reputation for high- energy live performances that transport audiences to the golden era of funk. Catch Shareef Keyes in Club B-10 at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday at 8pm.

Actress Jayne Atkinson, known for her roles in “House of Cards” and “Madam Secretary,” stars as legendary Texas Governor Ann Richards in “Ann,” a one-woman tour-de-force written by Holland Taylor and staged by WAM Theatre in the Tina Packer Playhouse at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., tonight through Sunday, Oct 28.

10-time Grammy Award nominee Meshell Ndegeocello has just released “Ventriloquism,” one of her best albums since her phenomenal 1993 debut, “Plantation Lullabies.” On “Ventriloquism,” the Hudson Valley resident, known for her lush, subversive, and sublime brand of soul and funk, tackles covers of songs that redefined black pop and R&B in the 1980s and ’90s, by artists including Prince, Janet Jackson, TLC, Sade, Tina Turner, and others, offering a fresh perspective from her unique vantage point. She truly makes these songs her own. A reviewer for NPR put it this way: “She reawakens the rhythm and the blues by returning songs to their original sender, wrapped in different packaging.” Check her out when she performs these and other numbers live in the Fisher Center at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., on Saturday at 8pm.

Also, novelist Sabina Murray reads at Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington tonight at 7pm; museum visionary Tom Krens lectures on “Art, Money, Oil, and Guns: The Saga of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi,” Sunday at 3pm at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown; and National Book Award finalist Ann Lauterbach will read from “Spell,” her new collection of poetry, at Oblong Books & Music in Rhinebeck, N.Y., on Tuesday at 6pm.

Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com